Vision 20/20: Life on an Ultralight Beam

As the final moments of 2019 end, we draw nearer to the end of the 2010s. Many approach the start of the new year and decade, with a new vision for themselves and a renewed resolve to set and reach physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual goals. While setting resolutions and creating vision boards to this end, it is easy to overlook another important aspect of this time of year, Epiphany.

During Epiphany, we journey with the wise men who saw the beam of light and made a pilgrimage to pay homage to the newborn king. A king who would establish his reputation as a Savior and Lord through his itinerant teaching and healing ministry. He taught in parables and healed the lame, sick, deaf, mute, and blind.

“But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord” (Luke 2.10-11).

On one occasion, in Mark’s Gospel, a group of people brought a blind man to Jesus, who was seeking to have his sight restored. Jesus took the blind man by the hand, led him out of the village, put saliva on his eyes, laid his healing hands on him, and asked him, “Can you see anything?” The man responded, “I can see people, but they look like trees walking.”

This story reveals that our sight can still be unclear even if we have 20/20 vision. According to the American Optometric Association (AOA), 20/20 vision is not perfect, rather “20/20 vision” is a description of normal visual acuity (sharpness and clarity) at a distance of 20 feet. Furthermore, “Other important vision skills, including peripheral awareness or side vision, eye coordination, depth perception, focusing ability, and color vision, contribute to your overall visual ability.”

As you develop your vision for 2020 and beyond, take some of the principles from these determinants of sight into consideration:

(1) peripheral awareness, or side vision, seeing ideas and people on the margins;

(2) eye-hand coordination, aligning your vision with your work;

(3) depth perception, seeing the distance between objects and relationships to determine where to place boundaries;

(5) color vision, recognizing the dignity and worth of all humanity-black, white, and all of the colors in between.

In addition to these vision skills, there are also some eye conditions to be aware of. For example, farsightedness is the ability to see well at a distance while being unable to bring closer objects into focus. The principle here is to keep your vision for the next decade while not losing focus of the daily habits and practices that will bring you closer to your goal next year. There is also nearsightedness, the ability to see close things while being unable to see things far away. The insight here is to make sacrifices and adjustments to reach your goals next year while keeping the big picture (your goals for the decade). Finally, there is presbyopia, which is the loss of focusing ability altogether.

In the story from Mark, Jesus places his hands on the man’s eyes a second time before the man’s sight is restored, and he sees everything clearly. As we now know, even with 20/20 vision and the other factors at play, we cannot see clearly without the light. With Jesus Is King Kanye answered the question, “Can you see anything?” like the blind man from Bethsaida. Kanye’s self-proclaimed musical genius has received a second touch with the release of Jesus Is Born.

“Ultralight Beam” first appeared as the opening track on The Life of Pablo. The Sunday Service Choir gives it a second touch on Jesus Is Born. Derrick Watkins, aka Fonzworth Bentley, was one of the producers/composers on the first edition of “Ultralight Beam.” Watkins described the origins of the idea in an interview in Fader magazine: “Here’s the ultralight beam, here’s what it means. This is that connection that goes straight to heaven. This is the thing that people say is intangible, that people try to wrap their heads around.”

Consider this ultralight beam as the universal desire to connect with something that is both bigger than ourselves and beyond our grasp. Life, then, on an ultralight beam is a life lived and walked “by faith, not by sight.” It is the life of Habakkuk’s runner who reads the vision written plainly on tablets and continues to run until it is fulfilled. Perhaps, it is what God envisioned at the beginning of creating when God said, “Let there be light.” And then later, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to Our likeness” (Genesis 1.26). In the creative light, humanity is the fulfillment and manifestation of God’s dreams.

As we set and live out our visions for 2020, will God’s dream shine through us? Will our lives be transparent, permitting God’s image to shine through us so that God can be seen? Will our lives be translucent, allowing God’s dream to shine through but not permitting others to see God clearly? Or, will our lives be opaque, blocking God’s desire altogether, leaving others in the dark?

In closing, be mindful of the AOA’s recommendations on comprehensive eye and vision examinations: “Periodic eye and vision examinations are an important part of preventive health care. Many eye and vision problems have no obvious signs or symptoms, so you might not know a problem exists. Early diagnosis and treatment of eye and vision problems can help prevent vision loss.”

I opened the year, reflecting on 20/20 vision. My focus was on allowing God’s light to shine through physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual goals for 2020 and well into the next decade. Three months later, the coronavirus became a pandemic and ill omen for the foreseeable future. The global focus shifted from visionary goal-setting to the collective health and well-being of our bodies, minds, and souls.

In my prayer time, I considered whether I was viewing life through yet another convenient, popular cliche and catchphrase. Advertisers had seized the moment and used Vision 2020 on billboards and in commercials to capture the interest and pockets of consumers. Was what I heard in moments of prayer and reflection, not a divine revelation for practical manifestation?

My 20/20 reflection on the determinants of sight that contribute to vision clarity is just as relevant now. Peripheral awareness helps us to see the essential workers on the margins of health care. Eye-hand coordination is needed to wash our hands, to avoid touching our face, and to wipe down surfaces. Depth perception allows us to keep a safe distance of 6 feet when out in public. Focusing ability helps balance social distancing, sheltering in place, working from home, caring for loved ones, and homeschooling children. Color vision reveals the disproportionate impact the coronavirus has on people of color.

I’ve learned that a virus is non-living. It can only exist and multiply within living host cells. The red wreaths pictured in some of the 3-D images of the coronavirus are called “corona.” These red wreath corona proteins attack healthy human cells, spread the viral infection throughout the body, and cause respiratory illness. The latest version of the coronavirus goes by many names. Popular culture has deemed it “that Rona.” Scientists refer to it as SARS-Cov-2. COVID-19 is the disease it causes. COVID-19 is an acronym: CO (corona) VI (virus) D (disease) 19 (2019).

In March, I saw the acronym Clarity of Vision Impacts Destiny see John 19 (COVID-19) as clearly as it appeared to me to reflect on Vision 20/20. The 19th chapter of John’s Gospel opens with Jesus under attack. The motley crew of Roman soldiers, officers, and temple police had arrested Jesus on trumped-up charges. After an extensive period of cross-examination, Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea, found no justification for punishing Jesus. But, each time Pilate offered to release Jesus, the crowd’s chant to “Crucify him” spread like a viral infection.

With no vaccine to regulate the contagion, Pilate eventually complies and releases Jesus to the soldiers to have him viciously beaten, scourged, and crucified. The Roman soldiers, officers, and temple police demonstrated a total and complete disregard for Jesus’ body, mind, and soul. This disregard for humanity by people in power has persisted from the 1st to the 21st century. The abuse of power and belief that one race is superior to another are symptoms of a virus. We have borne witness to the viral dehumanization of Black bodies for 400 years and, most recently, in the murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor.

Symptoms, though, are not the disease. They are signs and manifestations of the condition’s presence. The disease is racism, and the virus is sin. Racism, America’s original sin, is just as complex as the latest strand of the coronavirus. Prejudice and discrimination based on one group’s false sense of superior status is just as contagious and spreads just as quickly between symptomatic and asymptomatic carriers. And, similarly with still no curable vaccine in sight.

The term “corona” means garland or wreath in both Latin and Greek, the official languages of the Roman Empire. In ancient Rome, distinguished individuals received coronas in recognition of exceptional service. The Roman soldiers “wove a crown of thorns” to press into the head of the highly acclaimed King of the Jews. From the beginning of John’s Gospel, the message is clear: Jesus’s kingdom is not of this world. This world was the final destination for the fulfillment and culmination of God’s reign of both heaven and earth. With “the glory as of a father’s only son,” Jesus demonstrated the impact of a clear vision on one’s destiny.

Jesus, carrying the cross on his shoulders, knew his destination was neither Golgotha, the place of his crucifixion, nor the garden, the site of his burial. Instead, it was back to his eternal throne, seated at the right hand of God. Through his life and work, Jesus demonstrated how challenges, hardships, and setbacks are stages of the journey en route to his destination. Further, he revealed the depths of his commitment to his goal, the culmination of God’s kingdom through the restoration of all creation.

Clarity of vision helps us to see God. In the NT, the concept of destiny speaks to an order of operations determined by God’s intent to put things in order. Destiny is God’s appointed decree of what is and what is to come. In God, our destination is not a place. Instead, it is a state of being in a relationship with God, our selves, and our neighbors. Surviving and even thriving through the challenges, hardships, and setbacks of COVID-19, police brutality, and systemic racism will require a focus on God, self, and neighbor.

In the middle of John 19, the focus turns to the crucifixion of Jesus. The placard on Jesus’ cross read “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews” in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek. The inscription on George Floyd’s memorial is in two phrases, “Say Our Names” and “I Can Breathe Now.” The muralist reminds us of those who met a similar fate while transforming a common refrain and plea for help.

Among George Floyd’s final recorded words was a declaration, a plea for help: “I can’t breathe.” Floyd’s lament echoed the voice of Eric Garner, who made the same plea, “I can’t breathe,” while in a police officer’s chokehold. Among Jesus’s final words in John 19, we hear a vision for a vaccine. Love your neighbor: “Woman, here is your son.” Then he said to the disciple, “Here is your mother” (John 19.27). Love your self: “I am thirsty” (John 19.28). Love your God: “It is finished” (John 19.20).

This love-ethic is at the heart of Jesus’s message and teachings to his disciples: “I give you a new commandment that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another” (John 13.33-35).

Howard Thurman wrote of “destiny dealing decisions” in describing how life presents us with opportunities to decide on a course of action without complete knowledge of the facts nor of the impact of our decisions. In reflecting on the effect of Jesus’s destiny, Thurman wrote: “it has taken more than a thousand years to determine whether the death of the Son of Man on a cross outside the city wall was a mistake. It was madness, but with that madness, Jesus discovered a new world.”

The good news of the gospel is that Jesus, the one brandished with a crown of thorns, crucified, and buried, is the Christ. This same Jesus is the resurrected Savior, and God of the oppressed now wearing an eternal crown and robed with “salvation and glory and power” (Revelations 19.1). As the late theologian, James Cone wrote, “the gospel of Jesus is not a rational concept to be explained in a theory of salvation, but a story about God’s presence in Jesus’s solidarity with the oppressed, which led to his death on the cross. What is redemptive is the faith that God snatches victory out of defeat, life out of death, and hope out of despair.”

Clarity of vision will get us to the other side of COVID-19 and this stage of police brutality and social unrest with a renewed sense of humanity’s connectedness. Christ-followers and God-fearers of every nation, creed, tongue, ethnicity, and race carry the burden of reconciliation. To engage in this ministry is to bear the cross of protesting, sitting, standing, and marching in solidarity with the oppressed. In Jesus, the God of the oppressed had a clear and decisive impact on humanity’s understanding of its individual and collective identity, purpose, and destiny.

“The new normal.” “Unprecedented/uncertain/challenging times.” A pandemic tends to expose the shortcomings of our common language. How do we describe a thing that is affecting us in ways that most of us haven’t experienced in our lifetime? We use tried and true clichés. We use unfamiliar terms like “social distancing” which quickly become familiar, then overused and tiresome. For the sake of clarity and communication, we need these common descriptors, but it seems like these words fail to appropriately describe what we are actually experiencing and especially what we are feeling deeply inside our spirits.

What does a new normal mean to us in unprecedented/uncertain/challenging times like the ones in which we find ourselves? I confess that I have a strong disdain for clichés, I try to avoid them at all costs when I speak. My current least favorite happens to be “it is what it is.” This saying has became the lazy answer for almost everything that we can’t explain or put words to. The “new normal” functions much in the same way. We simply have no way to predict what tomorrow looks like, even when things are “normal”; yet we know that when something like a pandemic or a terrorist attack happens, we will experience more unpredictability than what we have become accustomed to in our daily routines. The disruption of our routines can be deeply unsettling, causing anxiety—even grief—a sense of loss that is difficult to put into words. So we say things like “we are all just going to have to adapt to a new normal.” Think about that statement and the reality of its meaning. The truth we knew yesterday is no longer true. How we function today has to be different from yesterday. Innocence is lost. We mourn the old (if we have time) and try to embrace the new; while we can’t actually share a literal embrace with another person to comfort each other in this “new normal.”

I haven’t gotten sick yet, no one within my closest circle has either. I see the suffering created by the Corona virus in the world around me. And yet, this virus and it’s effects on my world have revealed something in my spirit. Something I have found difficult to put into words. Frustration, anger, sadness, loss, fear and anxiety, suspicion of others… just to use a few descriptive words. I don’t like the fruit it has produced in me, I know that. And still, those words don’t seem adequate. Sometimes words just don’t.

Believers often joke about the shortest verse in the Bible. Everyone knows it and can quote it. “Jesus wept.” Have you ever thought about the gravity of that two word verse in John 11:35? Words failed the creator of the universe. God, wrapped in human flesh, was overcome by the emotion of seeing the pain and suffering of His friends and community. He knew what he was about to do. He knew why He had allowed the death of Lazarus to happen. He knew everything; and yet He could not and did not speak. He wept. He wept because it hurt. Jesus was human. He is the God who understands all the pain and suffering human beings experience. He understands the limitations of our human languages. He understands weeping simply because the grief is too much to bear and words fail.

In Romans 8:22-27, Paul speaks three times of “groaning” when words fail. Creation and humans groan in hope for something better. A world without pain (and viruses); a world that is yet to come. Paul then turns the reader’s attention back to the world as it is, a reality that often leaves one speechless. In times when a believer’s words fail, they know that the only outlet for what is happening in their spirit is to pray, yet they don’t know what exactly to pray. How can you pray about something that you can’t put into words? The Holy Spirit communicates with the human spirit. Many believers understand the role of the Holy Spirit to communicate the things of God to us. It is how we hear God. Sometimes we forget that the Holy Spirit also speaks to God on our behalf. Amazingly, there are times when words fail for the ultimate communicator, and even the Holy Spirit resorts to groaning. These deep, wordless groans are beautiful, they are understood by God. He understands the depths of what words cannot express. He hears and understands the unspoken and the unspeakable. When words fail, our triune God does not, even in unprecedented/uncertain/challenging times like these. So when you are overwhelmed, allow yourself to inwardly groan trusting that the Son identifies with the human side of your inexpressible feelings, that the Holy Spirit communicates the incommunicable to the Father on your behalf, and He is faithful to minister to your soul in times of trouble (and viruses).